Employees

Pros and Cons of Employee-Monitoring

May 23, 2023 by Paul Schwegler

Employee-monitoring is a phrase that generates discomfort. It sounds very Orwellian, or as if you’ll have all sorts of cameras on your people as if they’re in a reality TV show. When thinking of installing software on work computers, consider both pros and cons.

The pandemic sent many people home to work. Businesses that were reluctant to support hybrid and remote workers had to do so. But the concern about whether people are actually working remained.

Many IT departments answered by installing software on employees’ computers. Remote monitoring can track keyboard and mouse activity, websites visited, and app usage.

It’s the best of both worlds, right? The business gets increased productivity and improved employee morale through remote work. Plus, the software allows you to keep an eye on the off-premises work environment.

Your employees may not agree, however, and that’s only one of the considerations when deciding whether to monitor people working off-site.

Pros of employee-monitoring

Employee-monitoring allows you to see what people are doing during work hours. This helps management to identify time-wasters. Additionally, letting employees know that you’re watching can cut their time wasting.

Not all time-wasting is intentional either. So, this software can help you to see that certain tools or processes are eating up too much employee time. You can identify where new technology is needed, or put new processes in place to simplify workflow.

Monitoring employee time can also make client billing simpler. Add transparency with data about how long each individual works on a certain project.

Cons of employee-monitoring

Trust is a key component of employee engagement. Employees who feel trusted are likely happier and more willing to go above and beyond. Employee-monitoring can jeopardize the employee–employer bond. In fact, you may even lose employees who would rather work elsewhere than be monitored.

At the same time, you may be monitoring activity without gauging whether they are working. You can put software on their devices, but that won’t track everything. They could be using their brains for your business in some other important yet offline way.

You also run the risk of legal ramifications. Employee consent may be required to install the software on personal computers. You’d also want to let employees know if you’re monitoring them through the camera on their work devices.

Making the monitoring-employees decision

Monitoring often prompts employee concerns for their privacy and complaints about disrespect. Still, it may prove worthwhile for your business. If you do take the decision to install remote monitoring software, do so carefully. You should have clear goals for the software and communicate these to your employees. This lets them know how you will use this monitoring tool and what you will do with the information.

Looking to install remote-monitoring software for your business? Contact our IT experts at (515)422-1995. We can help you decide on goals, select the software, and implement a plan that works for you.

Talk to Your Staff About Tech Success and Stumbling Blocks

September 13, 2022 by Paul Schwegler

You may be in charge of tech for your entire business, but that doesn’t mean you actually use all the technology you source, install, and maintain. You’re responsible for updating that tech, supporting it, and monitoring for threats, yet you don’t have hands-on with that tech day in and day out. That means you can’t fully understand what’s working and what isn’t.

To gain a holistic picture of how your technology is working, ask the people who use it every day. You can’t rely on the fact that people aren’t complaining to mean your hardware or software is running smoothly.

There are many reasons employees might not reach out to tell you what’s wrong:

They are too busy to bring up their issues.
They don’t know how to communicate what’s holding them up.
They don’t realize that the obstacle they’re hitting isn’t normal for a particular solution.
They don’t know who to talk to about the problems they are having.

So, it’s up to you to be proactive. Reach out to employees to find out what they need to do their jobs better.

Gain the employee’s perspective

If you’re in IT, you’re seldom found in the trenches with your sales or marketing. You aren’t in accounting trying to track payments or keep up with supply-chain management. So, you can’t expect to know what the lived experience of your tech is like for those teams.

Talking to your staff about what’s needed can help you learn about:

digital solutions your people have heard about from peers at other companies;
new technologies staff would like to try;
roadblocks that are slowing productivity and undermining employee morale;
low-hanging-fruit changes that you can make to improve an employee’s experience (e.g. adding a second screen may be all that a disgruntled staffer needs to see their job isn’t so bad).

You might host a lunch-and-learn, where you discuss technology with different teams, or you could send around a survey. Emailing employees directly, and asking them to answer key questions can help, too. Focus your information gathering in three areas:

What works well for you?
What challenges are you facing?
What would make your life easier?

Of course, people are going to have different ways of speaking about technology. They probably don’t know a LAN from a PAN or a WAN, for example, but they will be able to convey whether they feel the network is too slow or not.

Prioritize tech solutions

Talking to people in the trenches with tech can help set infrastructure priorities. Once you’ve learned what tech is needed and what isn’t working as you’d hoped, reach out to a managed service provider for help. We can consult on new solutions and help you streamline business processes. We know tech for small businesses. Contact us today at (515)422-1995.

What is Digital Friction, and What to Do About It?

August 9, 2022 by Paul Schwegler

No one wants to work harder than they have to. Digital transformation is one way businesses can make employees’ lives easier. Yet simply increasing the amount of technology isn’t the answer. Digital friction can actually make the workday more challenging. Read on to learn more about digital friction, its demotivating force, and how to avoid it.

Digital friction describes added challenges employees face trying to work with business technology. As businesses add more digital tools, teams must adapt to a more complex ecosystem, but problems can arise:

Technology isn’t integrated, so there are now more steps to follow.
Workflows grow more complicated, as there are several digital solutions to navigate.
Employees are overwhelmed with notifications tracking, managing, and monitoring digital workflows.
New approaches create or duplicate manual processes.
Employees become overloaded with information thanks to the many new collaborative, digital tools.

Any of these issues is counterproductive to digital transformation. The idea behind adding new digital solutions is to streamline and simplify, but if you’re complicating the work environment, you’ll undermine productivity. You aren’t helping employee engagement and morale either. Your people grow frustrated with your fresh expectations.

Sources of digital friction

When you install new tech, you intend to save time, reduce effort, and improve productivity, but the best intentions don’t avoid digital friction. If you’re going to install digital technologies be wary of these problems:

Poor understanding of workflow. If you don’t understand what is happening now, you can’t effectively install digital processes.
Inconsistent workflows. When employees approach processes differently, there will be friction on new, digital solutions.
Poor-quality data. Digital technology relies on data. A major source of digital friction is low-quality data. Employees spend too much time locating, validating, and formatting data to see benefits.
Lack of understanding of a solution’s impact. Investing in tech for the sake of “going digital” is not setting employees up for success. You need to know what the technology can do and how it will impact employees’ daily work.

What to do about digital friction

Before even adding technology, consult with your employees. Learn their pain points and what they want from a digital solution. Find out how they are doing their jobs today. Then, you can work with an IT consultant to determine which digital offerings will add value.

Look for opportunities to integrate your digital technology. Help employees avoid information overload and being constantly pinged and notified. Take stock of all the apps and software you’re using. Identify where you are duplicating processes, especially manual ones. Ferret out the places where your people are having to work harder to do their jobs. Know that data quality is a prime culprit.

Make decisions about new digital technology based on outcomes. What do you want the software to do? How will it be used and managed? Be sure you know how this new tool you’re offering is going to help people if you want them to embrace the change.

Simplify access by ensuring employees have a positive user experience. With more employees working remotely or hybrid, they need to do their jobs on a wider range of devices.

Need help cutting digital friction? Our technology-agnostic IT experts can identify problems and increase productivity. We can also consult on legacy tech and data migration to support digital transformation success. Call us today at (515)422-1995.